![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Oct. 10th, 2008 03:32 pmA little while back, I asked on her for recommendations of fantasy books centering around sibling groups, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metaphor recced me William Nicholson's The Wind Singer.
The book is set in a dystopia where everyone is constantly sorted into classes (with associated colors, size of houses, etc.) according to the results of their standardized tests; Our Heroes, as is usual in such dystopias, are total individualists who do not fit in, get into trouble, and then must set out on a quest for the mythical object that will save their city from itself. One thing that struck me about this book - William Nicholson is a scriptwriter for movies as well as a children's author, and while I was reading it, I kept thinking how much I would like to see it filmed. There are a ton of incredible, cinematic images, some of them absolutely terrifying. The old children! Augh! (I have a Thing about creepy age-ified children anyways, so this hit all my buttons.)
The flip side of this is that I think the characters sort of felt to me like they needed that extra dimension added by an actor to really come alive. I was never quite able to get as invested in them as I wanted to be. . . . it probably did not help that I had just seen last week's episode of Project Runway as I was reading this, so every time I read about Kestrel (the sister) doing something rebellious an image of Kenley's face popped into my head. I did like how positively the parents were portrayed and how close the family were.
Final sum-up: I enjoyed the read, but I'm not sure I'm invested enough to read the rest of the books. If there's a film version ever put out, though, I'm totally buying a ticket.
metaphor recced me William Nicholson's The Wind Singer.The book is set in a dystopia where everyone is constantly sorted into classes (with associated colors, size of houses, etc.) according to the results of their standardized tests; Our Heroes, as is usual in such dystopias, are total individualists who do not fit in, get into trouble, and then must set out on a quest for the mythical object that will save their city from itself. One thing that struck me about this book - William Nicholson is a scriptwriter for movies as well as a children's author, and while I was reading it, I kept thinking how much I would like to see it filmed. There are a ton of incredible, cinematic images, some of them absolutely terrifying. The old children! Augh! (I have a Thing about creepy age-ified children anyways, so this hit all my buttons.)
The flip side of this is that I think the characters sort of felt to me like they needed that extra dimension added by an actor to really come alive. I was never quite able to get as invested in them as I wanted to be. . . . it probably did not help that I had just seen last week's episode of Project Runway as I was reading this, so every time I read about Kestrel (the sister) doing something rebellious an image of Kenley's face popped into my head. I did like how positively the parents were portrayed and how close the family were.
Final sum-up: I enjoyed the read, but I'm not sure I'm invested enough to read the rest of the books. If there's a film version ever put out, though, I'm totally buying a ticket.
